It is well known that regular exercise and physical activity provide significant health benefits, regardless of age, sex or physical ability. For example, exercise can help stimulate weight loss, promote muscle growth, combat health conditions and diseases, improve mood, boosts energy and enhance sleep. In addition, exercise can be a fun activity that gives the participants a chance to unwind, enjoy the outdoors or engage with family or friends in a social setting.
In recent years, a variety of competitions such as mudder races and cross fit games have focused attention on functional fitness training and have popularized gyms offering such training. Some of the benefits of functional fitness training including improving strength and cardiovascular fitness as well as improving endurance, stamina, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, accuracy and obstacle course performance. In general, the benefits of functional fitness training arise from utilizing the body's natural ability to move in multiple degrees of freedom as compared to conventional training using weight machines that may restrict movements to a single, unnatural plane of motion potentially resulting in faulty movement patterns.
Other competitions such as Sasuke in Japan and American Ninja Warrior in the United States have showcased elite athletes competing on a multistage obstacle course. During these competitions, obstacles such as the jump hang, the devil steps, the monkey pegs, the unstable bridge and the salmon ladder not only require the athletes to traverse a unique and complicated apparatus, but also to accomplish these tasks at a significant distance above the ground. To ensure the safety of the competitors, many of these obstacles are typically positioned above a water pit that catches competitors unable to complete the entire obstacle. It has been found, however, that due to factors including the complexity of the obstacle, the space required to build an obstacle course and the safety requirements associated with an obstacle course, obstacle training and obstacle course competitions are generally not available in local gyms, parks or other recreational facilities.